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Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk language
The Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk language is that language spoken by the ancestral peoples of the modern-day Viraayon Authority and X!aǹækikk U. It is the ancestral tongue to ’Aṣækikk, Qezayīg, and Viraayon. It is often referred to in shorthand as PVQ; this ‹Q› stems from the fact that ’Aṣækikk /ʔ/ comes from PVQ */qʼ/; in ’Aṣækikk, PVQ ejectives pharyngealized, with */kʼ qʼ/ → */kˤ qˤ/ → /q ʔ/, and usage of the ‹Q› is maintained for aesthetic reasons. Phonology Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk was heavily affected after ca. -1300 by Proto-Boreal, which introduced a substantial amount of new consonants. Notably absent from the original inventory were the click consonants that have become one of the major defining features of the Northern Sprachbund, themselves inherited from contact with Proto-Boreal. Word Order Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk is reconstructed as being OVS in order and was a combination of fusional and isolating in its morphology, showing a few early signs of having a nonconcatenative triconsonantal-root-based system, although it did not itself show the degree of nonconcatenativity exhibited in its daughter languages. Verbs The majority of all words in Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk stem from verbal roots, which typically were of the form *C₁V₁C₂V₂C₃. The first vowel typically functioned as a mood or connotational marker, the second serving as a marker of tense. There were a series of postpositive particles that served to mark voice and perfectivity. The particle */ɑ/ is believed to have marked perfectivity. Negation of the verb was accomplished with a prepositive particle */is/. The order of the verb phrase would have been thus (where parentheses mark an optional segment): (NEG) CVCVC VOX (PRF) Nouns and Adjectives Nouns and adjectives in Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk were formed from the selfsame stems as the verbs were. Nounal and adjectival morphology are identical, so that one might analyze nouns as simply being substantive adjectives (or adjectives nouns in apposition). Most deverbals were infixes. Number was not marked on nouns; adjectives succeeded the nouns. Roots to which the latter two deverbal suffixes had been affixed could optionally be followed by ordinary verbal voice suffixes. Cases There were two types of cases reconstructed for PVQ: Morphosyntactic markers and spatiotemporal markers. These markers always succeeded the noun they modified. The comitative was used in place of "and" and inclusive "or". Exclusive "or" was a postpositive conjunction *estɛ. Comparison Comparison was indicated with the following particle preposed to a noun or adjective in the comparative. Pronouns The pronouns in PVQ were are reconstructed as follows. They could apparently have taken the same nounal/adjectival case-marker suffixes as described above as well. Numbers Numbers were formed from triconsonantal stems as well, but showed a morphology much more similar to the modern-day attested root-based morphologies. Numerical stems could also fit into other categories and make verbs, nouns, &c. Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk counted in base six. Adverbials There were two types of adverbs, those modifying verbs and those modifying adjectives or other adverbs. Adverbs followed the modified word. Determiners There were four degrees of proximity in Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk determiners, and two numbers; determiners were the only grammatical category which marked number. The determiner occurred in the final position when in the noun phrase. Reconstructed Vocabulary and Roots See Appendix:Proto-Viraayon-’Aṣækikk roots and lexicon Category:Languages Category:Northern Sprachbund Category:Protolanguages Category:Extinct Languages